Another year, another defensive coordinator

On the Broncos coaching staff, it is the job that comes with the short straw.

Because since Mike Shanahan fired Larry Coyer as the team’s defensive coordinator following the 2006 season — Shanahan believed Coyer had gone too easy on some Broncos players in the postseason analysis after the Broncos had gone 2-5 down the stretch to finish 9-7 and miss the playoffs — the position has become a one-and-done deal.

There was Jim Bates in 2007, who had even been given the assistant head coach title. But he didn’t even make it out of the season’s first half before Shanahan was in the defensive meeting room stirring things up because of the Broncos couldn’t stop the run. The Broncos eventually finished 30th in the league in run defense that year.

Bates was offered a demotion for ’08 and and told he would no longer call the defensive plays so he decided to leave instead. So, Bob Slowik was the defensive coordinator in ’08 and was then fired along with Shanahan and most of Shanahan’s staff after and 8-8 finish when the team couldn’t stop anything. The Broncos finished 27th against the run, 26th against the pass, 29th overall and 30th in scoring defense.

So Mike Nolan was tabbed this past season to oversee the switch to the 3-4 and he’s out because, in essence, he wanted to do a little more overseeing the defensive plan than Josh McDaniels wanted him to –the kind of football break-up that is always termed an amicable “parting of ways.” And there was the little matter the Broncos again couldn’t stop the run, finishing 26th in the league in run defense.

So Dean Pees is next. Pees, having parted ways with the Patriots in recent days — amicably as well — runs the kind of 3-4 scheme McDaniels wants, has worked with McDaniels before and was a long-time college assistant before joining Bill Belichick’s staff in New England in 2004.

It has been an NFL tradition at times for a head coach to make life tough on the opposite of the ball that he oversees. The former defensive coordinators in charge often change offensive coordinators plenty, figuring they can fix any defensive problems on their own, while the former offensive coordinators — like Shanahan and McDaniels — always seem to be running the defensive coordinators through the office turnstiles.

But the bottom line is the Broncos had four different defensive coordinators in the last four seasons, with Pees set to be the fifth in five years. So the only things they have consistently done over that time is be unable to stop the run and pushing out the guy who was in charge of that.